I said out loud what everyone thinks: that you don’t make a queen by putting a silk gown on a farmhand’s granddaughter. You can put a gold chain on a pig and it still makes nothing but hams. Of course, everyone in our household repeated it and there was some sort of brawl with the Howard servants—as there have been dozens of brawls. And this is not my fault because I only said what everyone says.
Anyway, our man Sir William Pennington was getting bested and ran from the fight and took sanctuary in Westminster Abbey, and those brutes of the House of Norfolk ran after him and killed him, killed him before the altar, with his hand on the sacred stone and his blood on the chancery steps. Charles arrested them, and threw them into jail for breach of sanctuary and murder, but the Howards ran to tell the king that their men were defending the honor of the woman Anne—as if she had any. They have Harry’s ear and his attention, they are the new favorites, and now Harry is furious with Charles and me, and I don’t know what we’re going to do.
We’ve had to leave court—one of our household killed before an altar but it is us who have to leave! We have to wait till it blows over but we have simply no money, we never have enough money, and if Charles is not at court with Harry giving him fees all the time I don’t know how we will manage. And anyway, how can I go to court if she is taking precedence and behaving like a queen? I can’t give way to her. I can hardly bear to curtsey to her. What if she demands me to attend her in her rooms? Will Harry make me her lady-in-waiting? How terrible does it have to be before he sees that he is breaking my heart and Katherine’s spirit, and destroying everything we have ever achieved?
They tell me that Christmas was very quiet, the court was at Greenwich, and for the first time ever Katherine was not at court but alone at Wolsey’s old house, the More. That’s where she lives now. They have sent her away. The Anne woman showered gifts upon Harry but he sent back the gold cup that Katherine gave him. Sent it back, as if she were an enemy.
I don’t feel well at all but I suppose it is just worry about all this. Your life, so far away from England and with a good son and a loving husband, seems better than mine. Who would have thought that I would ever envy you? Who would have thought that we would both be happier than Katherine? Pray for us, your unhappy sisters.
Mary
And . . . they say that Thomas More will have to resign as Lord Chancellor for he cannot bring himself to swear that Harry is true head of the Church. Harry is tender for Thomas’s conscience and says that he can leave high office and live privately. How many of us are going to have to leave court and live privately when that woman comes in as queen?
JEDBURGH, SCOTLAND, AUTUMN 1532
I ride south to the borders, to join James. He is holding courts, executing sheep stealers and cattle rustlers, regardless of whether they come from the south or the north of the border, promising war with England.
“I will have peace in the borderlands,” he says tersely. “I will not stop till I get the English out of our sheepfolds and our towers.”
“This isn’t the way to do it,” I say gently. “You cannot frighten people into peace.”
“That was the Douglas way,” he observes.
“It was.”
“Do you ever think of him?”
I smile and shake my head, as if I am deeply uninterested in Ard: “Hardly ever.”
“You know I have to make the borders safe.”
“I do, and I think you are the king that will do it. But don’t threaten Harry with war. He will only bluster back. He has more troubles in his life than he can solve. If he continues to declare against the Pope, to insult the aunt of the emperor, he will find himself named a heretic king and all the Catholic kings will be authorized to make war on him. That is when you should declare against him. Not before. And now, while he is getting a reputation so terrible that kings will shrink from him—this is the time that you should negotiate with him for whatever you want.”
“I thought you were an English princess and the Tudors would always come first,” James remarks. “You’ve changed your tune.”
“I came here to bring peace between England and Scotland, but Harry has made it impossible,” I say frankly. “Again and again I have been loyal to him, but he has not been loyal to me, nor to my sister, nor to my sister-in-law, his wife. I think he has become a man that no one can trust.”
“That’s true,” James nods.
“He has moved my sister-in-law to a little house at Bishop’s Hatfield and forbidden her daughter from seeing her. He has put a whore in my mother’s rooms. He has gone too far. I cannot support my brother, I have to cleave to my sisters. I cannot be on his side.”
James looks at me, measuring my intent. “Yet when he calls for you, you’ll go running to him.”
“Not this time,” I say. “Not ever again.”
WESTHORPE HALL, ENGLAND, AUTUMN 1532
Harry is preparing another state visit to France and is spending a fortune on gowns and jewels, horses and jousts to impress Francis of France (ransomed home but proud as ever). I have said I am too ill to go, I cannot bear the thought of it and I have such a heaviness in my belly and my bowels that I truly am too ill to face it. I couldn’t dance at such a feast, my feet would not lift. When I think of the Field of the Cloth of Gold when we were so young and so happy! I could not sail to France again with a shameless woman in the place of the true queen.
Harry does not think of taking Katherine, he has not even seen her this year. He sends her the coldest of messages and she has to move house again and go to Enfield, because so many people are visiting her that Harry is shamed. I write to her, but Charles says that I may not go. It would displease Harry too much and I have to show loyalty to him, my brother and king, before anyone else. I have to greet the Boleyn woman with the respect due to the greatest woman in the land. I don’t dare say a word against her. I do it. I do everything that Harry and Charles ask of me, with a heart like stone, and when she sends out a dish to me I pretend to eat while my stomach turns over.
She is all smiles. All smiles and glitter in Katherine’s jewels. She shines like poison.
I have not seen Katherine for ten months, not for all this year, and I used to see her almost every day. She does not write to me often, she says that there is nothing for her to say. There is this terrible gulf in my life where she used to be. It is as if she were dead, as if my brother had wiped her from the face of the earth. You will think I am exaggerating but I truly feel that Harry has killed her—as if a king could execute a queen!
At any rate, I shall not go to France with the woman Anne. None of us will. And I hear that none of the royal ladies of France will greet her. How can they? She is Harry’s mistress and her father has a title so new that no one can remember it and everyone still calls him Sir Thomas out of habit. The only companions she can command are those who support her ambition: her sister, her sister-in-law, and her mother—and the gossips say that Harry has had all three of them. They are hated all round England. She and Harry had to come home early from this year’s progress because she was booed whenever she was seen.
I swear that sometimes I wake in the morning and I forget that all this has happened. I think Harry is a handsome king new-come to his throne, Katherine a beloved queen and his most trusted advisor, and I am a girl again, and for a moment I am happy, and then I remember and I am filled with such a terrible sickness that I retch up bile as green as envy. Thank God that our dear mother died before seeing this woman sitting in her place and bringing such shame on our sister, on us and on our name.
Mary
HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, WINTER 1532
Davy Lyndsay comes to court for a poetry joust. We hold a “flyting,” when one poet laughingly abuses another in a stream of extempore insults. James is witty and he has the court roaring at his abuse of his companion, complaining of everything from his terrible snoring to outrageous claims that he gets his rhymes from a book. Davy replies with a strong complaint about James?
??s promiscuity. I clap my hands over my ears and say that I will hear no more, but James laughs and says that Davy says no worse than the truth and that he must be married or he will repopulate the barren Marches with little Jameses.
When the laughter and poetry have finished there is dancing and Davy comes to kiss my hand and watch the dancers at my side. “He’s no worse than any young man,” I say.
“I am sorry to disagree with you,” Davy says. “But he is. Every night he rides out to visit a woman in the town or outside it, and when he doesn’t go beyond the palace walls he’s with one of the serving maids or even with one of the ladies. He’s a coney, Your Grace.”
“He’s very handsome,” I say indulgently. “And he’s a young man. I know my ladies flirt with him, how should he refuse them?”
“He should be married,” Davy says.
I nod. “I know. It’s true.”
“The Princess Mary will never do for him,” Davy says determinedly. “I am sorry to pass a comment on your family, Your Grace, but your niece will not do. Her title cannot be relied upon. Her position is not certain.”
I cannot disagree any more. Harry did not take his own legitimate daughter with him on a state visit to France; he took his bastard boy, Henry Fitzroy, and left him there on a visit with the King of France’s own children, as if he were a born prince. Nobody can be sure what title Henry Fitzroy will be given next, but Harry looks as if he is preparing him to be royal. Nobody can be sure that Princess Mary will keep her title; nobody even knows if you can take a title from a princess. No king, in the history of the world, has tried to do such a thing before.
“She was born with royal blood. Nobody can deny that.”
“Alas,” is all he says.
We are silent for a minute.
“Do you hear of your own daughter, Lady Margaret?” Davy asks gently.
“Archibald will not let her come to me. He’s put her in service to Lady Anne Boleyn.” I feel my mouth twist with contempt, and I smooth out my expression. “She is high in favor with the king her uncle. It is said to be an enviable position.”
“Young James wants to marry the French king’s daughter,” Davy remarks. “It’s been considered for years, she has a handsome dowry and it is the Auld Alliance.”
“Harry won’t like it,” I predict. “He won’t want France meddling in the affairs of Scotland.”
“No need for them to meddle,” Davy asserts. “She comes to be his wife, she’s not a regent. And we need the money she would bring. You won’t get a dowry like hers from Scots girls like Margaret Erskine!”
“Princess Madeleine of France it is then,” I say. “Unless we hear good news from England.”
Davy Lyndsay looks at me with a wry smile. “You hope for good news from England?”
“Not really, not any more. I never have good news from England any more.”
HOLYROODHOUSE PALACE, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, SPRING 1533
We don’t have good news. Harry himself writes to me in the New Year:
Sister,
It is with great pleasure that I write to tell you that I am married to the Marquess of Pembroke, Lady Anne Boleyn, a lady of unimpeachable virtue and reputation, who has consented to be my wife, as my previous alliance was no marriage—as every scholar now agrees. Queen Anne will be crowned in June. The Dowager Princess of Wales will live quietly in the country. Her daughter, Lady Mary, will be a respected lady and serve in the queen’s rooms.
LINLITHGOW PALACE, SCOTLAND, SUMMER 1533
It is over then, I think.
It is over, all over, for Katherine. My rival and my sister, my enemy and my friend, is finished with this final blow to her pride, her name, her very being. They move her again, this time to an old, ill-kept bishop’s palace, Buckden in Cambridgeshire, with a reduced household and too small an allowance to maintain her position as queen. She is poor again, just as she was when she was eating old fish. I hear that she still wears a hair shirt under her gowns, and now she patches her sleeves and turns her hems. But this time she cannot draw on her credit and her youthful courage and hope for better days. She is alone. Her confessor, Bishop Fisher, is under house arrest, her daughter kept from her. Lady Mary is not allowed to see her mother; she cannot even go to court unless she curtseys to Anne Boleyn as queen.
She is her mother’s daughter.
She won’t do that.
I am in a better place than both my sisters. I cling to this little joy, as stubborn as when we were girls jockeying for supremacy. I am married to a good man, I am seated in my little stone room at the top of my castle, I can see my country at peace around me, and my son is recognized king. I wish I had said good-bye to Katherine, I did not even know that I should say good-bye to Mary until I got her letter:
Dear Sister,
The pain in my belly is worse; I can feel a growth and I cannot eat, they doubt that I will see Christmas. I was spared the coronation—the wedding was held in secret because her belly was growing—and I doubt that I will see the birth of the Boleyn bastard. God forgive me but I pray that she miscarries and that the swelling of her belly is a stone like mine. I write to Katherine but they read my letters and she cannot reply, so I don’t know how she is. For the first time in my life I don’t know how she is and I have not seen her for nearly two years.
It seems to me now that we were three girls together with so much to hope for, and that it is a hard world that has brought the three of us to this. When men have authority over women, women can be brought very low—and they will be brought very low. We spent our time admiring and envying each other and we should have been guiding and protecting each other. Now I am dying, you are living with a man not your husband, your true husband is your enemy, your daughter is estranged from you, and Katherine has lost her battle against the prince she married for love. What is the point of love if it does not make us kind? What is the point of being sisters if we do not guard each other? M.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
As the book list shows, there are few biographies about Margaret, Dowager Queen of Scotland. Many accounts of her are frankly hostile. She suffers (as do so many women in history) from being so slightly recorded that we often don’t know what she was doing and we almost never know what she was thinking. The jigsaw of history gives a picture of abrupt changes of course and loyalties, and so many historians have assumed that she must have been either incompetent or irrational. They explain this by suggesting that she was in the grip of megalomania or lust, or more simply (and traditionally) a typical changeable woman.
Of course, I reject the concept of a “nature” of women (especially if it is said to be morally and intellectually weak), and in the case of Margaret, I think she was, without doubt, more thoughtful and strategic than the she-wolf/dolt model of female behavior. This novel suggests that Margaret probably did the best she could in circumstances which were beyond many people—male and female. Everyone seeking power in Europe in the late medieval period changed loyalties with remarkable speed and lack of honor. For Margaret, like her male enemies and friends, the only way to survive was to change her allies, plot against her enemies, and move as swiftly and as unexpectedly as she could.
She was born in 1489 as the second-oldest child of the arranged marriage of Elizabeth of York—a Plantagenet of the former royal family—and Henry Tudor, the victor of the Battle of Bosworth, and I believe that this sense of being the first generation born to a new dynasty was as powerful for her as for her better-known brother Henry VIII, giving them both a sense of self-importance and insecurity. I think she may always have had a sense of her own significance, as the oldest Tudor girl, and of inferiority: as a female and not one of the important Tudor male heirs. She was the plainer older sister to a child who was to become a famous beauty, and then a young wife to a much older husband in a marriage arranged for political gain.
I wrote her story in a fictional form, in first person present tense, because I wanted to be able to draw on this psychological explanation and
show it in her character. I wanted to describe her inner experience of three marriages, of which only the outward show is recorded. There is no account of what she felt when she lost the custody of her daughter Margaret, nor how she felt leaving her son James, nor her grief at the death of Alexander. The rules of writing history mean that a historian can only speculate about her emotions; but a novelist is allowed, indeed obliged, to re-create a version of them. This is where historical fiction—the hybrid form—does something that I find profoundly interesting—takes the historical record and turns it inside out; the inner world explains the outer record.
Some scenes in this novel are history. Margaret’s arrival at Stirling Castle with her husband’s bastards bouncing out to greet her is directly drawn from Maria Perry’s biography:
Margaret, who must have heard stories of her husband’s “past,” was taken aback to find her dower castle was used as a nursery for the King’s illegitimate children. There were seven in all. (Perry, p. 45)
Margaret’s husband’s devout religious observance, sense of guilt, and zestful promiscuity were reported too. It was the tragedy of her young life when he was killed at Flodden, and the theft of his body as a trophy is true, and was indeed ordered by Margaret’s sister-in-law, Katherine of Aragon.
It’s a tragic piece of history but completely inspiring for a novelist! Thinking of Katherine issuing an order of no prisoners—in effect, an order to murder the wounded and men trying to surrender—against her sister-in-law’s husband inspired me to tell this novel as the story of three sisters: the beautiful and indulged Dowager Queen of France; the well-known Katherine of Aragon, whose reign started with such hopes and ended in sorrow; and the almost-unknown Margaret, whose life was a struggle for political power and personal happiness.